Increasingly, the healthcare industry is turning to portable electronic medical devices to assist with care of patients. For example, a diabetes patient may use a blood glucose meter, an insulin pump, and/or a continuous glucose meter as part of the patient's medical treatment. Each of these devices is configured with suitable software for operating the device. Over time, the software and firmware and its associated data files may need to be updated. In the past, the patient was required to send the device back to the device manufacturer for updating. The device manufacturer would in turn install new versions of the software on the medical device and return the updated device back to the patient. In other situations, a device manufacturer may have sent a computer readable disk which contains updated versions of the software to either the patient or their healthcare provider, such that disk could used to update the software on the medical device. Each of these approaches has drawbacks.
Thus, there is a need for a digital distribution platform that can be used to publish and distribute product updates to portable medical devices. Rather than receive product updates directly from a device manufacturer, it may be more preferable for patients to receive product updates from an intermediary such as their health care provider. In this regard, the distribution platform should support distribution of product updates through an intermediary to the portable medical devices. Moreover, a given device may be interoperable with a plurality of other devices, and therefore any distribution method should take into account dependencies with other devices which are interoperable with the given device.
This section provides background information related to the present disclosure which is not necessarily prior art.